The Shoebox
by Karshtakavaar
Summary: Dick is mothballing the Manor after Bruce's death when he finds..."An inconspicuous brown box that once housed dress shoes but now contained...something else entirely. So here I am staring at the contents and feeling like I'm 8 years old again."


This is set at the beginning of Grant Morrison's Batman Reborn.

I don't own the characters, DC does. I'm not making money from them, just borrowing them for a while.

**The Shoebox**

I'm not sure exactly why I went into his bedroom in the first place. Maybe it was because this was his place, his space, more so than any other room in the Manor, more so even than the Cave. Perhaps I wanted to say goodbye one last time before we mothballed the old building. Perhaps. I certainly have no idea how I came to be looking where I did but suddenly there it was, tucked under the corner of the bed. An inconspicuous brown box that once housed expensive dress shoes in Bruce's size but now contained...something else entirely. So here I am sat on the floor with the lid off staring at the contents and feeling like I'm eight years old again.

I never realised he kept so much stuff from when Jason and I were little. So many school reports, our pictures, little gifts we made for him, he kept them all. There's not much of Tim here, not because he didn't care, but because Tim had a family of his own who kept those things. Bruce loved him, sure, but he was more of a mentor than a father. The parental thing, that came later for him. But our things - mine and Jason's - our things Bruce kept. I suppose it shouldn't surprise me given that he kept that damn Robin costume of Jason's in a glass box in the Batcave even after Jason himself came back from the grave. I always figured he was using it as a way to torture himself. A big old symbol of his failure watching over him while he worked - he was weird like that. You know the saying about the carrot and the stick and motivation? Well, using the carrot never even entered Bruce's mind and I think he was harder with himself than he ever was with us. Blasted perfectionist. If there were just Jason's school reports in that shoebox I'd put it down to that same streak of masochism. But it isn't just Jason's things.

Here is the first picture I ever drew for him. I think I'd been at the Manor maybe a week or so. Leslie thought it would be good for me to draw, that it might help me work through some of my feelings about my parents' death and coming to live with Bruce. It's not a very good picture, not really, but then I was an acrobat not an artist. When I gave it to him I didn't think he was really that interested in it. Guess I was wrong because here it is, folded neatly in two so it'll fit in the box. When I flip it over I find he's written my name and the date on the back.

Underneath it are other things: a blue envelope containing a card with a Ferrari on the front. "To Bruce, Happy Birthday, love Jason," reads the message on the inside. There's a scorecard for one of my Little League games, the symbols carefully noted down in Bruce's handwriting. Towards the bottom of the box there's a pair of cuff links Jason must have bought for him, a red Swiss Army knife (I got that for him for Christmas the year I was thirteen) and a large orange leaf pressed carefully between two sheets of tissue paper. I don't really know why that's there, beyond that it was important to Bruce. Perhaps Jason could have explained if he were here.

There are photos in the box too, ones I never even knew Bruce took. In this one I'm young, eight or nine maybe, sitting beside the large fire in one of the formal rooms opening my stocking on Christmas morning. Another photo, from back when Bruce first put the traps in the gym. I'm upside down, hanging from the bar in a catcher's lock. I'm grinning at Alfred so hard I wonder my head didn't split in two. Another. Jason in a tuxedo doing his best to look suave, superior and decadently bored by the party he's attending. You can see the fear in his eyes, though. Here's another one slipped inside the programme for a school production of Macbeth. Jason as a teenager, on stage dressed in a guard's uniform. The cast list shows he played the Porter. I look at the performance date. Only a few months before the Joker beat him to death. This is probably the last photo Bruce had of him. I stare at it for a moment before putting the print back in the programme. Putting the lid back on the box.

I always suspected Alfred kept some of this stuff, photos of me when I was little, my paintings, my reports, whatever. Somehow it never occurred to me that Bruce would. Then it hits me. He was collecting this stuff even through all our arguments when I was a teenager. He never threw it out. It mattered to him. We mattered. Both of us, Jason and I. We always mattered.

"Master Richard?"

I push the box back under the bed as Alfred comes to the door.

"I've finished with the dust sheets on this floor. Perhaps we should move on to the Cave."

His expression is sombre but supportive. I'm grateful. Closing this place down must hurt Alfred even more than it hurts me.

"You go ahead. I'll be down in a minute," I say.

On Bruce's nightstand there is a photo of the three of us, Bruce, Alfred and myself. It was taken on holiday in Switzerland, I think, one of those rare moments when Bruce was just Bruce not Batman in disguise. I pick it up and slip it into my bag. It doesn't feel right to move the shoebox but I need something, something that proves he was more than just Batman. I take one last look round the room then pull the door closed.


End file.
